Memories
by BleachedredViolet
Summary: Edward is given the chance to produce the philosophers stone... with a price. His quest for the stone goes amiss when he is faced with a choice: life or death? Drabble, R&R please.


•·.·´¯`·.·••·.·´¯`·.·•

_A second._

_A second is all it takes._

_The casual pull of a trigger, the thrust of a knife submerging in heavy flesh, the blinking of a pair of innocent eyes._

_The snap of a finger._

_The clap of a pair of hands._

_A choice between life or death._

•·.·´¯`·.·••·.·´¯`·.·••·.·´¯`·.·•

The air was heavy with the musky scent of compressed bodies, dust, and metal. Drenched in a pool of red light, the room was large and battered: crumbling in places due to age, but also to abandonment. It was clear that the place had not been entered for years, shown by its severe lack of human habitation. Black lines of alchemic circles were drawn in ink upon the walls and floors. Dust covered everything in the room in a light blanket, almost like snow, but thinner. When I had entered it, it had been kicked up in the air from the floor. Now it was settling again upon the containers of red liquid.

It looked like blood, but I knew that it was not. It was contained in glass spheres, jutting high up above my head to reach the ceiling. It was so bright that it nearly glittered without the aid of sunlight. It bubbled and spat near the top, a clear sign that it was either very hot or acidic, and dangerous to touch. It did not disturb the silence in the room, but instead added to the severe dreariness of it all. The containers were arranged in the shape of a hexagon around a transmutation circle inscribed in the floor. The arrangement was unlike anything I had tried before, much less seen.

He spoke behind me. His voice was thin and gritty, and it shook itself out of his throat like the crunch of sandpaper. Hearing it made me wince; it was hard to decipher exactly what he was saying without listening very carefully.

I was so tired. Tired of everything that we had gone through to get here. I knew what I had to do, but unsure if I had enough energy to do it. My limbs seemed almost unmovable as I walked towards one of the containers of liquid. It seemed to me that I was moving in slow motion as I jumped to one of the handles jutting out of it, and manoeuvred my way to the top. The ceiling nearly grazed my head.

I clapped my hands as a great rumbling threw me down from my spot to the ground, and rubble fell around my head. I could hear cries of surprise and conflict as the roof of the room crumbled and fell around me. Wearily, I opened my eyes to a cloud of dust. I coughed as I sat up, and tried to stare through it to see what had fallen from the floor above. My breath caught as the dust cleared and the group was revealed.

They were convicts. Prisoners, by the looks of it. Their hands were cuffed as they struggled to sit up without the use of their hands. They coughed and mumbled as they shook their heads and tried to clear the dust from around them.

When the realization came, anger flared through me. My energy came in a surge as I jumped to my feet and raised a hand to his neck. The fingers of my automail arm curled around the base of his throat and cuffed him by the fur.

I demanded to know why he hadn't told me that prisoners were being held in the floor above. A laugh escaped from his lips as I spoke and he didn't respond. I dropped my arm without further word and immediately turned to face the confused eyes of the criminals.

I asked them who had brought them there. They glared at me without word and said nothing. I gazed at them in hopeless exasperation. Suddenly, a controlling voice pierced the air from across the room to my right. I abruptly turned to witness the entrance of a new entity, but what I saw was something that I could have explained to no other with my own words.

He spoke with a demanding bark, as he did always in life, and instinctively it caused a jolt of panic to course through me. My eyes narrowed in apprehension. It was impossible that he could have been standing before me, then. I had seen him die with my own two eyes. He was obviously a fake. I leaped to my feet and ran towards him silently as he talked. The sting of my automail arm piercing through his skin silenced his words. I panted as I landed on light feet, and glanced up to see who the accused impersonator was. The shock was evident in my critical expression.

He, or it, was definitely someone that I had never seen before. Its hair was long and dark and thick, winding down its shoulders in thin, sharp spikes. Its eyes were black and dull, completely devoid of all colour of human spirit. It was tall and humanlike, but dressed in clothing that was rare to those of my kind. Its skin was as pale as paper, and looked as if it had never been touched by rays of sunlight before. I grimaced as I looked at it, and it grinned with a wide, horrendous face before speaking.

It asked me what gave it away. It told it that the Brigadier General had already died, and that I had seen it happen right in front of me. It started to laugh, then, which irritated me. I was tired of wasting time. I demanded to know what it was, and its name. It told me that it could be whatever I wanted, and cracked some joke about my height that I couldn't catch before heat blocked my hearing. I threw a fist at the thing, but it dodged it immediately. My hand caught nothing but the empty air. It laughed again, and I could feel my temper rising in my veins. It cracked another joke about my height that I caught, this time, and I impatiently flung another fist towards it. With a crack, my metal arm immediately caved and went limp. Caught unguarded, the thing immediately took the initiative, and kicked me to the ground. I winced in pain as I clutched my side and glared up at the thing. It smiled precariously at me.

They came in a wave. There were three of them in total, and yet, they came in such a way that blocked every exit surrounding us. I watched hopelessly from the ground as the prisoners were forced back into the transmutation circle. The two new ones were of the same nature as the one before me, but they were of an entirely different visual. The first was in the form of a human woman, clothed in a black, tight fitting dress. She had long, gnarly black fingernails and pearly teeth that grinned at me in satisfaction. The other was fat and stump, with large, buggy eyes that stared about it hungrily. Despite myself, I cowered away from it in fear. With a laugh the fatter one began to talk to the woman. He asked if he could eat. She told him to hold his appetite until the job had been done.

Immortality, she told. Bribery, she explained. Force, she showed, by means of the other one kicking me around.

I had bruises on my face, and dirt on my hands. I got to my knees as she talked, unaware of the prisoner she held against me. I refused to cooperate with their considerations. After a while she sighed, and asked the fat one to bring something out. He did, ever—smiling with prominent teeth, and went through a door in the back to grab something else. I heard a clanging sound as he came back: the ringing of metal upon cement. My eyes widened in horror as he returned and I lost the very last of my resistant force.

* * *

I remember what he told me once.

_**Al...**_

"Brother, someday we'll find the stone, and we'll get both of our bodies back."

_**God Damnit, Al!**_

I made a promise to him that day. I promised that I would return his body to normal, no matter what. I would fix what I had done wrong, and let him live as a human again.

_**No...**_

I lost everything the night that we tried to bring her back. It's hard to believe that I could lose something so valuable again.

_**He's my brother!**_

Because, he was just a soul attached to a suit of armour.

_**Please, he's my little brother; he's all I have left!**_

But that suit of armour...it was my brother.

_**Give him back!**_

* * *

I pleaded, I screamed. I thrashed, but I couldn't stop her from placing one of her fingers upon the seal of blood. I said his name, over and over again, hoping that he could hear me.

He did.

He called to me, in that small weak voice that he got every time he was scared.

_**Edward...**_

A jolt of panic rushed through me as I noticed her finger was still on the seal. In desperation I clapped my hands and used my alchemy to repair the ceiling. That was all that was needed for now.

_**Where's my body, Edward?**_

I screamed at them again. They restated what they wanted me to do.

_**...brother?**_

I had no other choice.

_**Where is your leg, brother?**_

My sunken eyes turned towards the prisoners in the circle. They huddled before me, cowering in a group. To my shock, I felt no pity for them. All I felt was the sickening longing to complete what I needed to do to get us out of her alive.

_**Edward!**_

We had a choice that night. A desperate one, but a choice nonetheless.

_**What have you boys done?**_

We had a choice to break the rules and bring her back. We had a choice to accept her death and attempt to live without her.

_**Edward? Al?**_

We did what we thought we had to do to keep living. We did what we thought would help us all. We did what we thought was right.

_**...you tried it didn't you?**_

We were young, and foolish.

_**Didn't you?**_

We had no idea that it would make things worse.

_**You tried to bring her back.**_

That we would lose even more along the way.

_**Where is she?**_

* * *

Things that can be performed in a second:

The snapping of fingers, the casual pull of a trigger. The blinking of a pair of innocent eyes.

It's hard to believe that something can be decided in such a short period of time. That the amount of time between thought and action can be so petty.

But it can.

And in that split, fragment of a second, choices can made that can change the course your own life.

_Clap._

Choices can be made that change other's lives.

_Breath._

Small things: the quickening of a heartbeat, the jolt of adrenaline through the veins of the human body. The intake of breath.

Such things can be completed in even the most tense of situations. The basic skills of human life. Despite everything, you're still living.

But that can all end in an instant.

_Blink._

_Swallow._

Life or death?

_Shift._

_Decide._


End file.
